The "do they mean us?" thread pt 4

[GlenParvaFox]

17 minutes ago, SemperEadem said:

Cov fans wanking themselves silly last night.

Let's be honest, this forum would be crispy underfoot this morning if the roles were reversed.

[kenny]

1 minute ago, GlenParvaFox said:

Let's be honest, this forum would be crispy underfoot this morning if the roles were reversed.

Not in the sisu, cov losing their stadium years. No club should be forced through that.

[fazzyfox]

 

“Yet he did have a say over the lucrative contracts handed to players with little market interest – Jannik Vestergaard, Harry Winks, Conor Coady, Jordan Ayew, Oliver Skipp and Bobby De Cordova-Reid.”

 

That’s what we’ve been calling out each time, why offer such a generous and long contract if there’s little or no competition from other clubs at the time for their signature. Don’t offer Vestergaard 3 or 4 years, offer 2, don’t offer DeCordova-Reid 3 years offer 2 at most, don’t offer Ayew…….well, don’t offer Ayew full stop. There was no need.

Looking after Matty James that time with the security of a 4 year deal was eyebrow raising, pretty bizarre but understandable as he was well known to the club and it felt more of a respectful gesture than a footballing decision. Ironically it’s other clubs (Bristol City & Wrexham) who have benefited from the second wind that security enabled him to have when it looked like he was close to finished. 
 

The Luke Thomas one is hard to fathom and in the event of another relegation we’d rather have fewer weighty contracts on our books than a remaining 3 years for someone currently struggling at this level of the game ie no higher ceiling.I don’t think anyone is thinking “Oh s**t, Luke is attracting so much interest we need to tie him down to a long deal” or “I hope no one comes in and poaches Luke Thomas from us”.

 

[Dan]

Always does my head in when Covid is blamed. If you consistently make bad decisions then things are just simply going to get worse. This is so basic, so fundamental. Anyone who falls for any of the bluster about covid is a fool.

[ALC Fox]

It's going to be an absolute bloodbath on here if we go down again and have to sell off the entirety of our best generation of academy players possibly ever to cover the cancellation of our higher earners' contracts.

 

It's horrible now but could be so much worse. Yet the club continually has its head in the sand.

[AKCJ]

3 hours ago, SemperEadem said:

Cov fans wanking themselves silly last night.

It's going to be so good when the best season they've had in 40 years coincides in the 2nd worst in our history yet the end result is that we both qualify for the Championship 2026/27 season.

[CosbehFox]

1 hour ago, Dan said:

Always does my head in when Covid is blamed. If you consistently make bad decisions then things are just simply going to get worse. This is so basic, so fundamental. Anyone who falls for any of the bluster about covid is a fool.

Easy answer to the Covid point. Ben White was sold to Arsenal for over £70m and we had some of the highest revenue intakes as a club in our history 

[suffolk fox]

4 hours ago, SemperEadem said:

Cov fans wanking themselves silly last night.

With six fingers.

[CrazyKopCorner]

2 minutes ago, suffolk fox said:

With six fingers.

Bunch of ****ing weirdos with that your dads your mum crap ......... grown men a lot of them as well.

 

****ing embarrassing 

[Xen]

6 hours ago, ALC Fox said:

It's going to be an absolute bloodbath on here if we go down again and have to sell off the entirety of our best generation of academy players possibly ever to cover the cancellation of our higher earners' contracts.

 

It's horrible now but could be so much worse. Yet the club continually has its head in the sand.

Can guarantee theres no clauses for relegation to league on in those hefty contracts, too. If we do go down, we're fvcked.

[OntarioFox]

12 hours ago, Dan said:

Always does my head in when Covid is blamed. If you consistently make bad decisions then things are just simply going to get worse. This is so basic, so fundamental. Anyone who falls for any of the bluster about covid is a fool.

Plus King Power were uniquely terrible at diversifying their income streams when Covid gave them a chance to. They doubled-down on Duty free rather than doing something sensible like pivoting to their domestic market or diversifying into other sectors, like so many other companies in the same sector did to stay afloat.

 

Failure to move with the times and make forward-thinking decisions while doubling down on bad ones has put their primary business into the shit, so it's no surprise they treat our football club the same way.

 

Folks who feel 'sorry' for King Power on the basis of COVID are actually mental. We're actively suffering financially because of their complete failure to secure revenue streams and reliance on wishful thinking rather than facing reality.

 

Edited 7 February by OntarioFox

[CornwallFox]

6 hours ago, Xen said:

Can guarantee theres no clauses for relegation to league on in those hefty contracts, too. If we do go down, we're fvcked.

It's a standard clause in contracts

[DerbyshireFox]

9 hours ago, CornwallFox said:

It's a standard clause in contracts

Yet we didn’t have those clauses in place in case we were relegated from the premier league as we were to arrogant to think that was a possibility one day

[CornwallFox]

4 hours ago, DerbyshireFox said:

Yet we didn’t have those clauses in place in case we were relegated from the premier league as we were to arrogant to think that was a possibility one day

We would have done. But our players would still be on a lot

[moore_94]

4 hours ago, DerbyshireFox said:

Yet we didn’t have those clauses in place in case we were relegated from the premier league as we were to arrogant to think that was a possibility one day

The players all had 35-50% wage reduction clauses in case of relegation from the Prem

[DerbyshireFox]

Sure I’d seen something this week to suggest the contrary, but possibly misunderstood given the litany of crap going on behind the scenes. 

[Sol thewall Bamba]

Good that more neutral outlets are shining a light on how bad things really are.

 

 

[The Year Of The Fox]

38 minutes ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

Good that more neutral outlets are shining a light on how bad things really are.

 

 

The cat is most definitely out the bag

 

 

The only people in the country that now think we’re well run are the KPFC fans. 

[OntarioFox]

The PSR charge has finally put our absurd wage structure under the microscope for folks that maybe weren't paying full attention.

It's kind of frustrating to see any comments thread about our charge derailed by "what about Man City" comments, because their ongoing farce overshadows the fact that, yes, we absolutely deserved it and probably deserved a lot more given we've spent 2-3 years trying to worm out of it via loopholes. A lot of more casual fans seem to swallow the "punished for challenging the elite" line, as if we really needed to be throwing £100k a week contracts at the likes of Boubakary f***ing Soumare to do that. But content like this from more "casual" football content creators goes a long way to making people realise just what a basket case we've become under Top.

 

Vizeh covered all the main points really, especially the ire towards Rudkin and our absurd decision to let the likes of Tielemans, Soyuncu and others run down their contracts and surrender potentially upwards of £100 million of transfer fees that would left us less likely to breach. He also pointed out the bad transfer business which has completely eroded our squad's ability to compete.

Only things that annoyed me about that analysis - 1) he completely glazed over the damage Brendan Rodgers did to us - didn't even mention him once besides the bit about us bottling Europe, which was just the tip of the iceberg of the disgraceful way he conducted himself while ruining our squad. And 2) didn't mention the Steve Cooper transfer window or the presence of Jordan Ayew at the club. But I'll let him off on the latter for pointing out Daka's price tag and atrocious return this season, lol.

Edited 10 February by OntarioFox

[davieG]

They completely forgot that we won the league, challenging the 6 with a team of rag bag 'no one wants' players on minimal wages.

 

Why did they think we had to pay new signings on mid-table players at best top six wages after that.

 

Big egos and illusions of grandeur. 

[Torten]

42 minutes ago, davieG said:

They completely forgot that we won the league, challenging the 6 with a team of rag bag 'no one wants' players on minimal wages.

 

Why did they think we had to pay new signings on mid-table players at best top six wages after that.

 

Big egos and illusions of grandeur. 

To be fair now we've got a squad full of players no one wants.

[Xen]

On 07/02/2026 at 02:26, CornwallFox said:

It's a standard clause in contracts

When we were first relegated from the PL, we were explicitly told that the leadership at the club just didn't have a plan for it because they didn't expect it to happen. 

 

We absolutely would have had clauses in the contracts for that relegation, but whether they were sufficient or not is questionable, and even when in the championship we were signing players on terms way out of the scope of this league. 

 

The fact that we've gone and got promoted at the first opportunity has made them think we're just going to do the same again - clear in Tops interview comments - and that league one is completely off their radar. Explicitly putting in clauses for a double relegation is so far past the level of forward-thinking these fools are capable of. 

 

 

If we get relegated we could halve the size of the squad and our wage bill next season would still be the biggest in the division.



From https://www.capology.com/uk/championship/payrolls/ (Not sure on the accuracy of these figures, so take with a pinch of salt) we have 6 of the 10 highest paid players in the division (Winks, Ricardo, Daka, Vestergaard, Skipp, Choudhury) and our overall payroll is ~£39m (33% higher than next-highest Southampton). By contrast, the highest payroll in League One is Cardiff who pay out £13m - a THIRD of what we're currently paying.

[Scotch]

18 minutes ago, Xen said:

When we were first relegated from the PL, we were explicitly told that the leadership at the club just didn't have a plan for it because they didn't expect it to happen. 

 

We absolutely would have had clauses in the contracts for that relegation, but whether they were sufficient or not is questionable, and even when in the championship we were signing players on terms way out of the scope of this league. 

 

The fact that we've gone and got promoted at the first opportunity has made them think we're just going to do the same again - clear in Tops interview comments - and that league one is completely off their radar. Explicitly putting in clauses for a double relegation is so far past the level of forward-thinking these fools are capable of. 

 

 

If we get relegated we could halve the size of the squad and our wage bill next season would still be the biggest in the division.



From https://www.capology.com/uk/championship/payrolls/ (Not sure on the accuracy of these figures, so take with a pinch of salt) we have 6 of the 10 highest paid players in the division (Winks, Ricardo, Daka, Vestergaard, Skipp, Choudhury) and our overall payroll is ~£39m (33% higher than next-highest Southampton). By contrast, the highest payroll in League One is Cardiff who pay out £13m - a THIRD of what we're currently paying.

I just find that incredibly hard to believe as I don't think it is much about planning than it is just standard contracts. I don't doubt that every player at Man City/Chelsea/UTD/Liverpool etc has the same clauses in their contract despite those teams not expecting to get relegated. 

[Les-TA-Jon]

2 hours ago, Scotch said:

I just find that incredibly hard to believe as I don't think it is much about planning than it is just standard contracts. I don't doubt that every player at Man City/Chelsea/UTD/Liverpool etc has the same clauses in their contract despite those teams not expecting to get relegated. 

Didn't Kieran Maguire recently say that whilst it's PL standard practice to have a low basic wage topped up by lots of performance based bonuses, LCFC were an outlier in having high basic pay as part of their contracts? 

 

If true, it's not safe to assume that just because something is 'standard practice' for the industry, that we're doing it. 

[Danizen]

45 minutes ago, Les-TA-Jon said:

Didn't Kieran Maguire recently say that whilst it's PL standard practice to have a low basic wage topped up by lots of performance based bonuses, LCFC were an outlier in having high basic pay as part of their contracts? 

 

If true, it's not safe to assume that just because something is 'standard practice' for the industry, that we're doing it. 

It's a huge outlier to watch Vestergaard run and think, 'three more years of that, please'.